When Linda Mockenhaupt walks through a cemetery, she sees people.

Not ghostly figures or haunting spectres of Halloween lore, but gentle spirits who once walked the Earth, living, loving and sowing seeds for generations.

"I see families," said Mockenhaupt of Harmar. "I see people who have lived very rich lives. People we should be aware of."

Mockenhaupt and thousands of people like her from around the country, including here in Pennsylvania, are participants in the Tombstone Transcription Project, a national effort by amateur genealogists to record details and even photograph as many tombstones as they can locate in single plots in people's back yards, long-forgotten family graveyards, old cemeteries and new well-kept memorial parks.

"It could be any cemetery. We've got cemeteries with one grave. We've got cemeteries with thousands of graves," said Shari Handley, the national coordinator and chairman of the advisory board for the US GenWeb project, the umbrella organization that oversees the Tombstone Transcription Project. "People all over the country are recording this information."

USGenWeb, one of the most popular research sites for genealogists on the Internet, was started in 1996 by amateur genealogists in Kentucky who wanted to collect genealogical data and resources from every county in that state. The project was so successful that within a year, virtually every county in the country had a USGenWeb page manned by volunteer researchers. The national Web site links researchers to state Web sites that in turn direct people to county Web sites.

All genealogical information on the sites is provided free, and because the system is county-based, the set-up allows researchers to track more easily information they're trying to ferret out, no matter in which state they're searching. In addition to the Tombstone Transcription Project, volunteers working through USGenWeb also are archiving church records, obituaries and marriage records.

"As you look through all the different counties, you'll find sites as different as the people who run them," Handley said. "There are thousands of USGenWeb county sites. Generally they give tips on how best to research in that county."

Honoring the dead

The Tombstone Transcription Project grew out of online discussions among genealogists about preserving information on tombstones, which provide a font of details for genealogical researchers.

"The Tombstone Project is one of our shining jewels. It's become pretty well known," Handley said. "People really believe in this project. They feel really passionate about it. They have a real sense they are honoring those whose information they are recording. It's more than just numbers and names."

In addition to the birth and death inscriptions, a tombstone's engravings or other symbols, size, shape or placement all can help genealogists answer questions about the people buried there.

"The tombstones get vandalized, or the inscriptions fade over time," Handley said. "But oftentimes, that's the only tangible evidence here on Earth that person ever existed. People don't often respect that as much as genealogists do."

The beauty of the project, said Kathi Jones Hudson, is that it allows genealogists to discover their family roots even if they can't travel.

"I think genealogy is the biggest hobby in the country and it's huge on the Internet, so people just want to get the news out to other researchers," Hudson said. "Births, deaths, church records, we'll take whatever we can get our hands on."

Hudson lives in California but oversees the work of volunteers in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, states where she is most likely to find her own family records. Once the volunteers send her the information they've transcribed, it's her job to post it on the Internet.

"We have volunteers who may submit one name from one cemetery. I have a few who are out there constantly [recording tombstones]," Hudson said. "Most of us feel differently about cemeteries than other people. We love them."

Her counterpart for Pennsylvania is Jan Cortez, who lives in Michigan and also records cemeteries there. Both women are also on USGenWeb's National Advisory Board.

Cortez took over the Pennsylvania Web site about six months ago because it hadn't had an active coordinator to post information on the Internet. She is working to update the site and is also posting information that volunteers such as Mockenhaupt send to her.

"I think that if everybody in every state would pitch in, then it would make it so much easier for those of us researching from out of state," Cortez said. "That's my idea of what the project is all about."

Local cemeteries

Locally, volunteers have transcribed tombstones at several dozen cemeteries, including the old St. Luke's Church Burial Ground and Garden in Chartiers Valley; Duff's Cemetery in Darlington, Beaver County; Spruce Spring Cemetery in Canonsburg, Washington County; and Fellsburg Cemetery in Rostraver, Westmoreland County.

Among the cemeteries that Mockenhaupt has recorded is Morrison Cemetery in Lower Burrell, which now sits on private property. Mockenhaupt found the cemetery while searching her ancestry and located the grave of a relative named Abraham Kipp.

Kipp descended from a long line of colorful Pennsylvanians who fought in the American Revolution and practiced religious tolerance. Kipp's forebears included a woman who was tried for throwing a tankard of ale on the governor of New York to protest a massacre of Indians.

"It seems a shame to have a man with such a rich heritage ... buried in a forgotten cemetery," Mockenhaupt said. "I planted Forget-Me-Nots on his grave so that people would know that he was still remembered. That's one of the reasons that I feel it's so important to record these cemeteries before they disappear."

Cortez said she's seen interest in the project explode since she got involved in Michigan two years ago.

Back then, she was getting two to four submissions a month from researchers who had gone to cemeteries and copied the information from tombstones.

Now she gets several a day.

"This project is here to help everybody," Cortez said. "We've lost so much. We need to get out there and preserve what we have today before that is lost, too."

Handley agrees. Tombstones can deteriorate rapidly, so once the information on them is lost, it's lost forever.

"The ones that are readable today might not be readable in five years," Handley said. "There was this sense of urgency. We thought, 'Let's get this done before it's too late.' Hundreds of years from now when we're gone, genealogists will be glad we've recorded these interments."

For more information about the Tombstone Transcription Project, visit www.usgenweb.org.